It occurred to me earlier that in these contentious times there are only two things that still unite right-wingers of every stripe:

1. Supreme Court vacancies
2. Dunking on Jim Acosta

Let’s end the week with some unity.

Benny Johnson has a partial transcript of the video below in case you can’t make out Acosta’s audio. Watch the full clip and you’ll see that Trump spent part of his time talking about how he expects any emergency declaration to be blocked by the Ninth Circuit — which is true. Is that why he’s holding off? Maybe:

What led to Trump shelving his national emergency declaration? Multiple sources tell @HallieJackson, @KellyO and me that many of his advisers are urging caution. They're not convinced it's a viable way to build the wall, they're afraid he'll lose in court and set a bad precedent.

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) January 11, 2019

So what if he loses in court, though, especially at the circuit level? He might win in the Supreme Court. And this is his only avenue to beginning construction on the wall apart from the highly unlikely event of a Democratic surrender. If he issues the order and wins in court, he can declare victory. If he loses, no problem. He can always try to make a deal with Congress for wall funding later. The court battle should be irrelevant to him. The precedential considerations are another matter.

Philip Klein notes that Miami International Airport has already closed a terminal for a few days because they can’t staff it due to shutdown-related sick-outs. As that spreads, that’s what’ll lead POTUS to issue his decree.